SABOTEURS are considering blackmailing landowners in Gloucestershire in an effort to halt the badger cull.
The threats came as scores of campaigners from Gloucestershire boarded battle buses on Saturday to protest in London with campaign chief Brian May.
Shooting badgers in parts of the county has been authorised by the Government as part of a pilot cull aimed at stopping the spread of bovine TB.
The cull period – which runs until February – started on Saturday. The move has enraged animal rights activists, who maintain it is inhumane and ineffective.
Splinter group Stop the Cull is planning to exert pressure on Gloucestershire landowners to get them to drop their support for the policy.
Spokesman Jay Tiernan insisted that campaigners could draw the cull to a halt in just two weeks.
He added: "We are aiming to bring a stop to the cull and we are confident we can achieve that.
"In order to go ahead the cull needs 70 percent participation from landowners in the area, so our plan is to put pressure on those landowners to stop them taking part."
He said tactics could involve infiltration of farms, hoax phone calls, playing loud heavy metal music to scatter badgers – and even blackmail.
He added: "We are prepared to dig up the dirt on these people and expose them if they do not agree to stop culling on their land. We are not afraid of taking these wealthy landowners on."
The group has identified a key battleground in Gloucestershire's cull area as the Forthampton Estate, a 3,000 acre stretch near Tewkesbury.
Campaigners have been creeping on to the estate in recent months to find ways to persuade owner John Yorke to drop his support for the cull.
Police denied that a helicopter flying over the estate yesterday belonged to them.
Two thousand people marched on Westminster at the weekend to show their opposition to the policy. Coach loads of Gloucestershire campaigners took part. Led by rock star May, who presented a 234,000-name petition to the Government, they renewed calls for the cull to be aborted.
Children chanted, older protesters used loud hailers and young women dressed in badger outfits to highlight the cause. A string of black dogs, with white stripes painted on their faces, walked alongside.
Gloucestershire police say they will take action over incidents of crime and disorder relating to the cull.
